Wittgenstein and the Conditions of

Musical Communication
1
HANNE AHONEN
In his article Wittgenstein and the Understanding of Music
2
Roger Scruton raises the important but overlooked topic of
Wittgenstein on the understanding of music. He argues that when
Wittgensteins discussion of facial expressions and their role in
first-person knowledge is properly understood, and applied to
music, we may say that you understand a piece of music only if you
imaginatively grasp the state of mind expressed by it (p. 1).
Scruton does not claim that Wittgenstein himself held this view,
just that he should have. In this paper I want to take another look at
Wittgensteins remarks on the issue to see what Wittgenstein was
after and why. I will argue that, according to Wittgenstein, under-
standing music is not so much related to grasping states of mind as
it is to an ability to follow the specifically musical rules that consti-
tute the system of music. This is to say that, contra Scruton, the
necessity we hear in music when the tonic follows the dominant sev-
enth, as a paradigm example of musical understanding, is ground-
ed precisely in the conventional rules of music (see p. 2).
According to Scruton, Wittgenstein does not give a full-fledged
argument about musical understanding, but his contribution lies in
the way in which he connects the notion to the understanding of
facial expressions. Scruton acknowledges that Wittgensteins
conception of understanding facial expressions seems to stay at the
level of recognizing expressions on anothers face. However,
Scruton wants to take this notion further by claiming that one can
gain access to the other persons first-person knowledge, i.e.
knowledge of what it is like. This happens by first recognizing
Philosophy 80 2005 513
doi:10.1017/S0031819105000446 2005 The Royal Institute of Philosophy
1
I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Lydia Goehr, and to
the members of the Aesthetics reading group at Columbia University,
especially Michal Gal, Jonathan Neufeld, Brian Soucek, Sirine Shebaya,
and Tiger Roholt, for helpful comments on this paper. I would also like to
thank my father, Dr. Kari Ahonen, for sharing his knowledge of music
with me.
2
Roger Scruton,Wittgenstein and the Understanding of Music,
British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January 2004).
facial expressions and then looking behind them to what they
mean. In this way one becomes familiar with the other persons
states of mind from within, as we know our own emotions. This is
possible because, according to Scruton, you can be looking out-
wards and yet gaining first-person knowledge. Scruton claims fur-
ther that understanding music is based on a similar model, where
we search for a meaning beyond the immediate Gestalt. If suc-
cessful, this search leads the listener to place within his first-person
perspective a state of mind that is not [his] own (pp. 79).
It is true that Wittgenstein talks about recognizing an expression
on anothers face in relation to listening to music. However,
Scrutons view of the significance of these remarks could hardly be
correct if taken as an interpretation of Wittgensteins own view, nor
could it be one available for Wittgenstein, granting the premises of
his later philosophy. This is because the connection between mean-
ing and understanding is not one of making a connection between
the sign and its meaning (an object, event, or property) in the
understanding of those who use the sign, as Scruton claims (p. 2).
In most cases of meaning no such connection is necessary for the
sign to have meaning: the meaning of the sign is its rule-governed
use in its context, and understanding is nothing but the ability to
follow these rules. In the context of understanding facial expres-
sions this means that in a significant sense there is nothing behind
a facial expression that would count as its meanings. Rather, we
learn to apply mental terms as part of a complex network of con-
ventional and situated rules. In the Brown Book Wittgenstein says:
The same strange illusion which we are under when we seem to
seek something which a face expresses whereas, in reality, we are
giving ourselves up to the features before us the same illusion
possesses us even more strongly if repeating a tune to ourselves
and letting it make its full impression on us, we say: This tune
says something and it is as though I had to find what it says. And
yet I know that it doesnt say anything such that I might express
in words or pictures what it says. And if, recognizing this, I resign
myself to saying It just expresses a musical thought, this would
mean no more than saying It expresses itself (BB
3
, 166).
Instead of suggesting a certain conception of musical understand-
ing by bringing up the commonplace intuition of facial expressions
as reflections of first-person knowledge of what it is like,
Hanne Ahonen
514
3
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (BB) (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1958/1964).
Wittgensteins analogy could be read as an attempt to explain his
fairly unintuitive conception of the mind by appealing to a concep-
tion of music that is formalist.
4
While I will not offer conclusive
arguments here for this reading in its entirety, I will argue for the
claim that Wittgensteins conception of music was formalist
5
, a
claim that has often been denied and seems to be put in jeopardy by
Scrutons argument.
As Scruton points out, Wittgenstein repeatedly compares under-
standing music to understanding language. Wittgenstein writes:
Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a
theme in music than one might think. What I mean is that under-
standing a sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordi-
narily called understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the
pattern of variation in loudness and tempo? One would like to say
Because I know what its all about. But what is it all about? I
should not be able to say. In order to explain I could only com-
pare it with something else that has the same rhythm (I mean the
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
515
4
Interestingly, Wittgenstein compared a musical tune to a sentence
already in 1915 when he was working on the Tractatus. He wrote: A tune
is a kind of tautology, it is complete in itself; it satisfies itself [Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Notebooks 19141916, G. H. von Wright and G. E. M.
Anscombe (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 40].
In the Tractarian framework the implications of this claim are formalist:
while propositions that have sense are pictures of reality, a tautology does
not say anything about reality, but only shows its own logical form.
[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.464.463, D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness (tr.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1921/1961). In the
Blue and the Brown Books, where Wittgenstein begins to develop his later
philosophy, he makes the same point: It has sometimes been said that what
music conveys to us are feelings of joyfulness, melancholy, triumph, etc.,
etc. and what repels us in this account is that it seems to say that music is
an instrument for producing in us sequences of feelings. And from this one
might gather that any other means of producing such feelings would do for
us instead of music. To such an account we are tempted to reply Music
conveys to us itself! (BB, 178). And we find the same analogy in the
Philosophical Investigations (quoted on page 3 of this paper). One could
speculate that Wittgenstein held a formalist view of music throughout his
life, a view he had come to hold thanks to his background in the Brahmsian
musical circles of Vienna, and that this view actually played a role in the
development of his philosophy of language and mind.
5
See, for example, Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgensteins
Vienna (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1973), 197.
6
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (PI), G. E. M.
Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).
same pattern). (One says Dont you see, this is as if a conclusion
were drawn or This is as if it were a parenthesis, etc.). (PI
6

527).
Scruton claims that Wittgensteins remarks on musical understand-
ing are too fleeting to constitute an argument. While this may be
true about Wittgensteins remarks on music taken in isolation from
the larger framework of his later philosophy, I believe that it is pos-
sible to reconstruct his argument by focusing on the analogy
between language and music, and by taking a look at the central
claims he makes not only about the understanding of language but
also about linguistic meaning. For, in my view, the question about
understanding does not displace that of meaning, as Scruton claims
(p. 2). Instead, the notions of meaning and understanding are inti-
mately linked, and it is impossible to understand one without
understanding the other.
The project of Wittgensteins later philosophy is to give an
account of the necessary conditions of communication. According
to Wittgenstein, linguistic meaning is not based on reference, on
structural isomorphism between language and reality, on the speak-
ers mental act of intention, on hypotheses about the speakers state
of mind, or on the effect the linguistic expression produces in the
listener. Nor does understanding the meaning of a sentence consist
in having a mental state, a representation, a feeling of familiarity, a
mental act, or a process. Instead, the meaning of a linguistic expres-
sion, such as a word, a phrase, or a sentence, is its use in the lan-
guage, where linguistic practices are analogous to games that are
played in accordance with their rules (PI 6577). The rules of
language govern the uses of linguistic expressions in their respective
contexts and the meanings of these expressions are constituted by
these rules. The rules are conventional, but it would be a mistake to
confuse them with rule-formulations that we find in grammar books
or dictionaries. Rather, they are institutions, or customs, given in
the actual instances of following them (PI 199). Since the rules of
language are given in their applications, there is an internal connec-
tion between understanding (applying the rules correctly) and
meaning (rule-governed use): any given application of a rule is part-
ly constitutive of the rule itself. This means that meaning as well as
understanding are phenomena that reside in the medium of expres-
sion, not anywhere beyond or behind it.
What is meant by Wittgensteins third-person perspective on
understanding, is his view that understanding is not a hidden men-
tal phenomenon (PI 143242). A person understands an
Hanne Ahonen
516
expression when he is able correctly to apply the rules that govern
the use of that expression, i.e., when he is able to perform properly
in certain situations: tell a joke when the situation calls for it, answer
a question that is being asked, respond to a greeting, request, or an
insult, correct a grammar mistake in a students paper, etc..
Sometimes the ability to explain the meaning of a word, or to give
a definition for it, is taken to be a distinct criterion of understand-
ing.
7
It is questionable, however, whether the ability to explain the
meaning of a word should be given a special standing among
linguistic performance. If the meaning of a word is its use, the
totality of its use cannot be captured by any finite explanation.
Moreover, since understanding does not happen once and for all but
is a gradual growth in the mastery of a technique, it is misleading to
emphasize the ability to give formulations of rules (PI 148, 150,
154). Rather, giving explanations should be seen as a special case of
being able to apply the word, no more indicative of understanding
than explanations by exemplification. This is because giving exam-
ples is not an indirect means of explainingin default of a better
[...] The point is that this is how we play the game (PI 71).
Wittgensteins point is that there have to be public criteria for
understanding. A person may think that he understands an expres-
sionhe may have a particular Now Ive got it sensation, a
mental representation of what he takes to be the rule governing the
expression in question, or a private interpretation of its meaning
without actually understanding it (see PI 258). Similarly, he may
intend (in the mentalistic sense of intending) If it doesnt rain I
shall go for a walk when he utters bububu, but from the public
perspective his utterance amounts to nothing meaningful. In fact, it
is possible to intend something only in language. (PI, 18n.) Thus,
insofar as we are interested in language as a medium of communi-
cation, what counts as understanding is the individual speakers
ability to use the expressions of the language correctly, i.e., in the
conventional way (PI 74, 560). Considerations of his mental
states are irrelevant for determining whether he plays our game or
not. What matters is the agreement in the rules of language, which
is a necessary condition of communication. And, as Wittgenstein
points out, this is not agreement in opinions but in form of life (PI
24142); the agreement manifests itself in the behavior of the lin-
guistic community, in the fact that they use linguistic expressions in
these particular ways.
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
517
7
See, for example, G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules,
Grammar and Necessity Vol. 2 of an Analytical Commentary on the
Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 8385.
So, if I want to determine whether someone understands what is
meant by counterpoint, say, I can ask him to define the term, to
give me an example of a musical piece that utilizes it, to identify a
musical passage of this kind, or even to write a few bars exemplify-
ing contrapuntal structure. And what about myself? I do not have to
observe my linguistic performance to know that I understand the
term counterpoint. In this sense I do have first-person authority
regarding my knowledge of musical terminology. However, had I
never discussed counterpoint with those who teach and compose
music, never listened to standard examples of contrapuntal texture
(e.g. Das Wohltemperierte Clavier by Bach), never recognized the
feature in a jazz solo (e.g. one of those by Brad Mehldau), my claim
to knowledge would not be justified. In this sense my knowledge
does not consist of a private, qualitative mental state to which only
I have access, but presupposes the framework of musical practices
and my immersion in them. This is because the semantic grounds
of my claim are nothing more than my actual mastery of the rules
relevant for the application of the term.
It may be tempting to think that there is something deep about
the notion of familiarity with ones own states of mind, and that this
feeling of what it is like gets reflected in ones facial expressions.
But, according to the later Wittgenstein, facial expressions are not
reflections of mental states. Instead, facial expressions function as a
part of the many public criteria of applying certain mental terms.
So, it is indeed characteristic of some mental states, e.g. emotions,
that they all have a specific sign like a gesture or facial expression
(Z
8
513; LA
9
IV:7). In addition, for many emotions, there is an
external reason or an object; and sometimes emotions include typi-
cal physiological sensations (Z 288, 487506). Most importantly,
according to Wittgenstein, it is part of the grammar of intentional
terms that we use them only of human beings, or of things that
behave in a similar way (PI 281, Z 505). All these things work as
the public stage-setting that makes it possible for mental terms to
have meaning. And this stage-setting is necessary even in my own
case: if I try to get a hold of a certain emotion, I have to set up a
suitable context for this emotion in order for it to have determinate
Hanne Ahonen
518
8
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel (Z), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von
Wright (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).
9
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics,
Psychology and Religious Belief (LA), C. Barrett (ed.) (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1966).
content.
10
Without such a framework my feeling, or any other men-
tal state, may be anything, or nothing (PI 6).
Scruton takes Wittgensteins point to be that neither the sense
nor the reference of mental predicates can be specified from con-
siderations merely of the first-person case. He further claims that,
even though there are no first-person facts, there is first-person
knowledge, and this is what we imaginatively understand when we
understand a facial expression (p. 3). But Wittgensteins claim is
more radical than this. He is not only arguing that the knowledge of
mental states cannot be grounded merely on private experiences,
but also that intentional terms do not have referents: they stand for
nothing, neither an inward nor an outward thing (Z 487).
Wittgensteins reasons for holding this view do not arise merely
from his anti-Cartesian anxiety, as Scruton implies (p. 8), but from
the fact that his rejection of the Tractarian referential account of
language is meant to apply to mental terminology as well.
Expressions to understand, to intend, to be in pain, to be
happy, are not meaningful in virtue of reference; in these cases too,
meaning is grounded in the ways in which these words are used in
our language.
Since the mental states or processes of other people, mentalisti-
cally understood, are not accessible to me, they cannot be among the
criteria for correctly ascribing mental states to someone. As sug-
gested by the counterpoint example, mental states do not justify
these ascriptions in the first person either. Knowledge and under-
standing cannot depend on qualitative experiences or states, because
these experiences are arbitrary in such a way that they can neither
be constitutive of meaning, nor function as grounds for communi-
cation. Wittgenstein goes even further to claim that insofar as there
are mental contents related to linguistic uses, they too are deter-
mined by the public language: it is not only that what can be meant
(intended) by an expression is determined by the public meaning of
that expression, but also that the specific content of our thoughts
depends on the public use of our language (PI, 18n). Thus, accord-
ing to Wittgenstein, a musical phrase may indeed produce a curious
sensation in the listener. However, just like the if-sensation that I
may have in relation to the word if, this sensation is irrelevant to
the meaning of the musical phrase. Moreover, something like the
imperfect cadence -sensation, to use Wittgensteins example, fails
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
519
10
See PI 642, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology Volume 1 (RPP1), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright
(eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 466, 1088.
to have any content independently of the musical phrase itself (PI
pp. 18183; RPP2
11
373379).
If Wittgensteins later account of meaning and understanding is
applied to music, then the meaning of musical expressions, such as
chords, cadences, and themes, should be taken to be constituted by
the rules of music, and the understanding of music to be the ability
to follow these rules. This is to say that insofar as music is to be seen
as a form of communication, i.e., insofar as musical phrases mean
something and can be understood, then the necessary conditions of
this communication reside precisely in the conventional nature of
the rules of music.
12
Since the account that I am attributing to
Wittgenstein is a formalist one (in the sense that it takes the content
of music to be something like what Hanslick called tonally moving
forms
13
), it may appear unattractive to many; therefore, in the
following I will address four objections to a rule-based notion of
musical understanding, some of which are pointed to by Scruton to
motivate his argument.
Objection 1. Unlike in the case of natural language, we cannot take
the ability to follow the rules of music as the criterion of understanding
it, because listening is not an activity of the relevant kind. According to
Scruton, we cannot adopt Wittgensteins third-person approach as a
theory of the understanding of music, because, for most of us, tak-
ing part in musical practices takes the form of listening rather than
performing, or composing music, which could be seen as the musical
equivalents of producing sentences in natural language (p. 5). Why
does Wittgenstein insist, then, that understanding a sentence is like
understanding a musical theme? Wittgenstein was not unaware of
the possible difficulties of applying his later notion of understand-
ing to the case of music. But instead of falling back on the mentalis-
tic notion of understanding in the case of music his discussion of the
understanding of music centers around the attempt to show that
there are ways to determine, based on public criteria, whether a per-
son actually understands music in the sense of following its rules.
In the case of language one way to demonstrate understanding is
to explain the meaning of a word or a sentence. In the Zettel
Hanne Ahonen
520
11
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology Volume
2 (RPP2), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.), G. E. M.
Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
12
Cf. Scruton: We must see music as an act of communication, which
crucially depends upon placing within the listeners first-person perspec-
tive, a state of mind that is not his own (op. cit. note 2, 9).
13
Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, Geoffrey Payzant (tr.
and ed.) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1854/1986), 29.
Wittgenstein considers this as a criterion of understanding music (Z
156175). He writes: If a theme, a phrase suddenly means some-
thing to you, you dont have to be able to explain it. Just this gesture
has been accessible to you. However, it is as if Wittgenstein finds
this answer problematic because he adds: But you speak of under-
standing music (Z 15859). The generally received view of
musical understanding would be to explain understanding by
referring to a cognitive, emotional, or imaginative state in the
listener; I take Scrutons view of the understanding of music as a
familiarity with a state of mind that is not ones own to be an
example of this approach. Wittgenstein, however, rejects these
explanations just as he does in the case of natural language, and
proceeds in a way familiar from his non-psychologistic treatment of
understanding language. He claims that the fact that someone says
about a work of art Isnt that glorious!, but cannot give an account
of sensations or experiences that have accompanied his hearing of
the work, does not mean that he has not understood it no more
than the absence of certain mental states means that someone does
not know how to continue a mathematical series (PI 155). After
all, such experiences are only contingently related to understanding.
However, if the person cannot point to certain tie-ups, i.e., objec-
tive features of the medium of expression and how these are used in
the work, then we are justified in doubting his understanding. (Z
170
14
.) In the Lectures on Aesthetics Wittgenstein writes:
Of a person who doesnt know [poetic] metres but who is over-
whelmed, we would say that he doesnt know whats in it. In
music this is more pronounced. Suppose there is a person who
admires and enjoys what is admitted to be good but cant remem-
ber the simplest tunes, doesnt know when the bass comes in etc.
We say he hasnt seen what it is. We use the phrase A man is
musical not so as to call a man musical if he says Ah! when a
piece of music is played, any more than we call a dog musical if it
wags its tail when music is played (LA I: 17).
According to Wittgenstein, the ability to make aesthetic judgments
presupposes that one has learned the rules of the art form in ques-
tion, and as one learns the rules his judgments become more and
more refined (LA I: 15); and learning the rules of music means,
among other things, to be drilled in harmony and counterpoint (LA
I: 15). One way to demonstrate the mastery of these rules is to give
explanations about a given musical work. These explanations may
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
521
14
This section deals with poetry, but the sections immediately before
and after are about the understanding of music.
take different forms, but to count as explanations of the relevant
kind, i.e., as possible criteria of understanding music, they have to
be related to the specific features of the work in question.
15
The
explanations cannot be causal or psychological, any more than
explanations about the meaning and the understanding of natural
language can be given in terms of hidden mental states (LA II
3538; LA III 8, 11). Exhibiting mastery of the rules of music takes
place at the level of the rules themselves, i.e., at the level of music.
Thus, understanding music can be seen in the fact that one can
point to a syncopated rhythm in a piece by Brahms (LA III: 10),
draw a parallel between two composers, or compare two artists from
different fields but the same historical period of art.
A special case of comparisons between music and its surround-
ings are those between musical passages and linguistic phenomena.
Interestingly, Wittgensteins examples of these comparisons are all
formal in nature. Instead of bringing up linguistic expressions that
could be interpreted as pointing to language-independent reality
(objects, events, or mental states), he talks about phenomena such as
intonations, conclusions, parentheses, confirmations, questions and
answers (Z 175; PI 527; CV,
16
59). I believe that here
Wittgenstein is talking about the same musical phenomena that are
discussed by musicologists, music psychologists and music
pedagogues, who talk about the importance of recognizing musical
implications, or forming musical expectations, based on the specifi-
cally musical features of the Western tonal system, such as the hier-
archical nature of the tonal scale.
17
The same phenomena are essen-
Hanne Ahonen
522
15
To use the counterpoint example, that a person is able to recite the
dictionary definition of counterpoint does not necessarily show any-
thing about his understanding of music (although it shows something
about his mastery of language); that he can point to examples of contra-
puntal music already shows some degree of musical understanding (given
that he does not identify the pieces based on extramusical information);
and the mastery exhibited in contrapuntal improvisation is, of course, a yet
different level of understanding.
16
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (CV), G. H. von Wright (ed),
Peter Winch (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
17
See, for example, James Mursell, The Psychology of Music (Westford:
Greenwood Press, 1937/1971). Eugene Narmour, The Analysis and
Cognition of Basic Melodic Structures: The implication-realization model
(Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1990). Carol L. Krumhansl,
Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990). Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (London: the
University of Chicago Press, 1956). Leonard B. Meyer, Explaining Music
(London: the University of Chicago Press, 1973).
tial in systems of music education, like the one developed by Zoltan
Kodaly, where each degree of the scale is represented by a hand sign
(a closed fist as the sign of tonic, index finger that points up as the
sign of the seventh degree, etc.). Moreover, and not incidentally, I
believe that these are the features of music that Hanslick wanted to
emphasize as the relevant theoretical, grammatical rules of music
which should be the subject matter of musical aesthetics.
18
What is important here is that the questions, confirmations, and
conclusions we hear in music are musical in nature. If one does not
know that in Western tonal music the dominant (or some other
unstable degree of the scale, or a harmonic phenomenon like disso-
nance) must be followed, eventually, by a musical resolution like the
tonic, he cannot hear the question in the music. Similarly, if one is
not familiar with the phenomenon of a melodic contour, he cannot
point to musical features that are less important for the progression
of the melody, and thus hear them as if in parentheses. And if one
does not remember the opening theme played by the guitarist of a
jazz trio, and pay attention to the particular way in which he
phrases the theme, then one cannot follow the development of the
initial musical thought in the solos of the other musicians. But this
just means that there is something lacking in the listeners musical
understanding.
Another criterion of understanding music is the reactions of the
listener. Scrutons example of an aesthetic judgment is a case where
two listeners hear a sentimental tune; one enjoys it while the other
hates it because of the sentimentality. According to Scruton, both
may have understood the tune, but while the first is able to identify
with the sentimentality the other is repelled by it (pp. 56). While I
do not want to imply that reactions like these cannot be relevantly
related to the understanding of music, it is important to notice that
Wittgensteins examples of the appropriate reactions of the listener
demand more specificity. Rather than being simple reactions of
liking or disliking in the face of a given musical work or an
expression, they often take the form of discontent that arises from
the realization that a certain musical choice made by the composer
or the performer does not quite work. Discontent of this kind may
be expressed by saying (about a door): Make it higher... too
low!...do something to this. (LA II: 10); in the case of music,
similar discontent could be expressed, for example, by saying that
the passage does not harmonize, because the bass is not loud
enough, or that the passage is incoherent (LA I: 19). Again, these
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
523
18
Op. cit. note 13, 2.
kinds of reactions presuppose familiarity with the rules that make a
variety of musical choices possible within a given musical context.
Thus, we do not have to witness a musical performance or a
composition to have grounds to determine whether someone
understands music or not; his explanations of or reactions to a per-
formance may serve as the criteria of understanding.
19
As the
mastery of the rules comes in various degrees, the explanations and
reactions may be more or less specific. One should also not forget
that there are performative ways to exhibit ones understanding of
music, less demanding than giving a recital. One can comment on a
performance by humming a passage with a different phrasing, clap
a rhythm that was performed as a triplet as punctuated, etc..
Wittgensteins favorite example of these performative explanations
is, of course, whistling:
But in most cases if someone asked me How do you think this
melody should be played, I will, as an answer, just whistle it in a
particular way, and nothing will have been present in my mind
but the tune actually whistled (not an image of that) (BB, 166).
Objection 2. Many listeners have not studied music theory, and cannot
explain what they hear in theoretical terms. Part of Scrutons worry
about analyzing the understanding of music in terms of conven-
tional rules seems to arise from his conception of language.
According to him, linguistic signs are entirely conventional, and
their semantic properties are governed by a generative grammar (p.
2). Scruton does not elaborate this statement much further, but his
footnote, in which he mentions Lerdahls and Jackendoff s
Chomskian work A Generative Theory of Tonal Music as an instance
of explaining musical understanding in terms of linguistics, seems
to indicate that the conception of language he has in mind is not
unlike the one offered by Chomsky and his followers. But to use the
Chomskian account of language in order to illustrate Wittgensteins
analogy between language and music, to back up the claim that
music is neither conventional nor governed by a generative gram-
mar, is strange. This is because Wittgensteins later account of lan-
guage is in most relevant respects diametrically opposed to that of
Chomskys, which is committed to universalism, radical distinction
between syntax and semantics, and, most importantly, to the claim
that the generative grammar is an innate, psychological entity that
explains linguistic performance. It is not only that Wittgenstein
rejects all psychological explanations of linguistic performance, but
Hanne Ahonen
524
19
See LA I: 12, 17, and LA II: 9. See also CV 5152, 6970.
also that for him the terms grammar and rules refer to nothing
over and above the actual practices of the linguistic community.
Scruton is correct in claiming that musical understanding is not a
form of theoretical understanding (p. 4). This does not mean, how-
ever, that the understanding of music could not be similar to the
understanding of natural language, given Wittgensteins view of the
latter phenomenon. One does not have to be able to cash out his
knowledge of the musical rules in theoretical vocabulary, as a child
does not have to be able to explain why the predicate follows the
subject in a well-formed sentence. In most cases the ability to fol-
low the rules of music takes the form of what is sometimes called
implicit or tacit knowledge, and it is acquired without formal train-
ing in music theory. People who have been brought up in the
Western culture, surrounded by Western tonal music, haveto a
greater or lesser extentbecome familiar with the rules that consti-
tute the meaning of musical expressions.
20
This is what I take
Wittgenstein to mean when he says: If you havent learnt Harmony
and havent a good ear, you may nevertheless detect any disharmo-
ny in a sequence of chords (LA I: 15). It might be tempting to
think that the source of this ability is innate. However, as
Wittgenstein repeatedly points out in the Lectures on Aesthetics,
being able to make aesthetic judgments presupposes that the person
is brought up in the relevant culture. The knowledge of the rules is
specific in such a way that it is questionable whether one can
properly appreciate the artistic products of different historical time
periods, or foreign cultures (LA I: 2531).
Well-formed musical thoughts, like well-formed sentences, can,
of course, be analyzed theoretically, and these analyses do capture
an aspect of the meaning of music. But since the rules of music, as
well as those of natural language, reside in their actual applications,
a theoretical description is at best an abstract skeleton of the mean-
ing of a musical performance. This is because, when a person is
integrated into the musical practice he does not only learn the struc-
tural properties of music that theory talks about, but he is also
trained to recognize, and perhaps produce, the fine nuances of
performance practices. Often these nuances, such as those related to
phrasing, timbre, and the treatment of rhythm, are described
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
525
20
For empirical results to this effect see, for example, Edwin Gordon,
Learning Sequences in Music (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1984). David J.
Hargreaves, The Developmental Psychology of Music (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986). Robert Francs, The Perception of
Music, W. Jay Dowling (tr.) (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1958/1988).
John A. Sloboda, The Musical Mind, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
metaphorically in emotional or figurative terminology. But this does
not mean that they are not objective, conventional features of music,
and that they cannot be accounted for by Wittgensteins later notion
of a rule. In fact, the emphasis that Wittgenstein gives to practical
drilling, the use of examples, and watching how others play a game
in order to learn its rules, seems to capture what actually takes place
in learning how to play a piece lamentabile, or to distinguish
between performances of Bach according to baroque and romantic
performance practices (PI 6, 54, 71).
Objection 3: Explaining musical meaning and understanding in
terms of rules does not do justice to the creative aspect of music. We feel
that in language we have freedom to express our thoughts in new
and original ways, and that the thoughts themselves are not deter-
mined by rules, least of all conventional, institutionalized ones.
This freedom of creativity seems to be even more central to our
conception of music. This very objection was raised to Wittgenstein
himself during his Lectures on Aesthetics. Here is his reply:
You can say that every composer changed the rules, but the vari-
ation was very slight; not all the rules were changed. The music
was still good by a great many of the old rules (LA I: 16).
If all the rules of music were changed at once, the end result would
be something incomprehensible to us. But this does not mean that
there is no place for creativity. The rules of music, like the rules of
language, are constitutive. They do not determine the specific con-
tent of my sentences in advance, but rather they make the various
moves possible within the parameters of the rules. In this sense lan-
guage is like a labyrinth of paths that does not prescribe which
path one should take, yet makes movement possible (PI 203).
21
Just
as there are various ways to respond to a question, there are various
Hanne Ahonen
526
21
Stravinsky, in his The Poetics of Music, expresses this idea beautifully: The
more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. As for myself, I
experience a sort of terror when, at the moment of setting to work and finding
myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the
feeling that everything is permissible to me. If everything is permissible to me,
the best and the worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is
inconceivable, and I cannot use anything as a basis, and consequently every
undertaking becomes futile. Will I then have to lose myself in this abyss of
freedom? To what shall I cling in order to escape the dizziness that seizes me
before the virtuality of this infinitude? However, I shall not succumb. I shall
overcome my terror and shall be reassured by the thought that I have the seven
notes of the scale and its chromatic intervals at my disposal, that strong and
weak accents are within my reach, and that in all of these I possess solid and
ways to use a certain chord in a musical reply to a musical question.
22
And, according to Wittgenstein, the reinterpretation of the chord
as a modulation first into this, then into that key, could be com-
pared to the reinterpretation of a facial expression (PI 536).
Wittgenstein is not claiming that one cannot break the rules, nor
that the instances of breaking rules are unintelligible. One could
even say that one does not understand music unless he notices the
point in breaking the rules (Z 160). However, even in music, there
is some consistency in the rules that constitute its meaning, and it is
only in virtue of this consistency that the instances of breaking the
rules become intelligible. Since every instance of following a given
rule is partly constitutive of the rule itself, a composer (or a group
of composers) has the freedom to gradually develop the rules. He
may introduce new musical rules into the system (e.g., the transition
from polyphonic to homophonic texture), borrow rules from other
musical systems (e.g., the use of pentatonic and whole-tone scale in
Debussy, or the use of modal scales in Sibelius), or change the
immediate context of a phrase (e.g., musical quotes in Stravinsky
and Shostakovich). However, the meanings of these new expres-
sions depend on the system as a whole. The new expression does not
have meaning in isolation, but the tradition of music provides the
necessary stage-setting for the new expression by showing the post
where the new expression is stationed (cf. PI 257).
Objection 4: The fact that people use mental terminology, emotional
terminology in specific, when they describe music shows that the mean-
ing of music is somehow related to mental states. Wittgensteins later
method of philosophy is to describe how language is de facto being
used, and not to interfere with this use in any way (PI 124). Based
on this, one might object to the view proposed here by saying that
since some of the aesthetic explanations about music clearly involve
mental terms, the understanding of music must be related to men-
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
527
concrete elements which offer me a field of experience just as vast as the upset-
ting and dizzy infinitude that had just frightened me. It is into this field that I
shall sink my roots [] What delivers me from the anguish into which an unre-
stricted freedom plunges me is the fact that I am always able to turn immedi-
ately to the concrete things that are here in question. [Igor Stravinsky, The
Poetics of Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), 85.]
22
The intuitive aspect of Platonism in music seems to be the notion of
finding or discovering a musical expression. From the perspective of this
paper, a composer may indeed find an expression, only that he does not
find it in a Platonic realm of forms. He finds it in the system of music as a
potentiality, as a possible way of applying the rules that are transmitted by
the tradition.
tal states; music is said to be sad, melancholic, courageous, etc.,
because these attributes capture its meaning. I think this view is
mistaken for the following reasons.
First, Wittgensteins analogy is between language and music, not
between language and music criticism broadly understood, i.e., that
area of language which we use to describe and comment on music.
In the analogy both language and music are treated as self-standing
systems that have significant similarities, such as the existence of
rules, applicability of the context principle regarding meaning, and
mastery of the rules as the criterion of understanding. Instead of
drawing conclusions about the meaning of music based on the lan-
guage we use to describe it we should listen to how the musical
expressions are actually used in their respective contexts. Also, as
Wittgensteins remarks on music show, he puts less emphasis on
aesthetic explanations given in mental terminology. One reason for
this could be that, if we are looking for criteria of understanding
music, general claims like describing Chopins Etude op. 10 no. 12.
as conveying a mental state of wild despair, resignation to ones
fate, passionate love, or controlled anger seem all equally
plausible as explanations about the general character of the piece.
Although these descriptions may be signs of understanding, and
entertaining such ideas may help in performing or listening to the
piece, in case of a disagreement there are no grounds for rejecting
any of the descriptions. Therefore their role as criteria of under-
standing is less central.
Second, unlike in the case of language where an explanation of
the meaning of a given word captures at least a part of the words
meaning, most explanations of music are only indirectly related to
music itself. The difference between explanations about linguistic
meaning and explanations about musical meaning is that in the first
case the explanans are given within the medium of explanandum,
i.e., within the context that gives its elements their role, function,
post, or use. In the second case we often have to fall back on com-
parisons, metaphors, gestures, or even dance steps, that are given in
a context alien to the particular musical expression itself (CV, 79).
This is unless we are willing to enter the medium of music itself
and whistle the tune in a particular way, sing a continuation to an
incomplete melody, or improvise on the theme Body and Soul.
Since most of us do not compose or perform music we take linguis-
tic explanations of musical meaning to be the typical criteria of
understanding music. However, this does not mean that musical
meanings could be adequately expressed by any other than musical
means. Nor does it mean that the understanding of music could take
Hanne Ahonen
528
place in any other medium besides the musical system itself.
One of the main points of Wittgensteins later philosophy is the
publicity of meaning: meanings are not hidden mental entities, nor
objects in language-independent reality. Instead, meaning is found
in the uses of words and sentences, and the understanding of it is
the ability to follow the rules governing these uses. This is to say
that the communal agreement in the rules of language is a necessary
condition for communication. I have tried to show that these
notions apply to music as well. If we take Wittgensteins later
account of understanding language seriously, then insofar as we can
speak of musical communication understanding musical expres-
sions and intending something by them there must be conven-
tional rules of music, given in the corpus of musical works, in their
performances. Without these rules there is no criterion of under-
standing an expression correctly, and consequently no understand-
ing to speak of. The rules of music are conventional in the sense that
no dispute over them can arise. As such they are the only available
foundation for musical communication.
Columbia University
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
529